


NeuroSymbiosis

by Mirradin



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Auxiliary Animorphs, Brain Damage, Crossover, Gen, Gratuitous Scene Switching, even more questionable biology, questionable application of Yeerk morphs, use of characters so secondary you probably don't remember them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4594971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirradin/pseuds/Mirradin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since the accident, Tony Stark lives his life to a two-hour clock.</p>
<p>He has no choice. Ever since the accident, Tony Stark is beholden to the rhythm of someone else's life.</p>
<p>Ever since the accident, Tony Stark is not the only one who has to be Tony Stark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	NeuroSymbiosis

Ever since the accident, Tony Stark lives his life on a two-hour clock.

Two hours of sleep at a time. Two hours of engineering before he has to take a break. Two hours of battle, two hours of flight, two hours, two hours, two hours…

In the early days, he (they) throws himself (themselves) into finding a cure; not much later, he abandons that in favour of turning a two-hour clock into a three-day rhythm. Just in case.

It can’t be done. Or, probably, it could be done (certainly by the Tony Stark before the accident, if not the one who emerged from the wreckage), if only Tony Stark knew exactly what Kandrona rays were.

But Pedro doesn’t know what Kandrona rays are made of, only what they do, and so Tony Stark lives his life to the two-hour morph limit, with Pedro scraping the edges of life as a nothlit.

**

Tony doesn’t see Pepper much, anymore.

He would like to – he wants to tell her everything, even as he hopes she’ll never know – but it’s not just ‘him’ now, it’s ‘them’.

Pepper deserves better than that.

**

Shortly after the accident, they made a list. Parts of his brain that were whole and parts that were jumbled or drowned in blood, functions that were retained, functions that could be restored by routing the electric crackle of his thoughts   
through Pedro’s Yeerk body when they hit a gap, functions that were lost but which Pedro could substitute for.

Parts of himself that were lost.

He lost some cognitive capacity – inevitable, really, even with a living brain wrapped around his own his cerebral cortex had taken damage that couldn’t be repaired. He was still a genius, still smarter than just about anyone else he spoke to, but his thoughts were slower when they used to flow like quicksilver. Mechanical puzzles he used to understand at a glance had to be worked through, step by step.

His motor control was all but gone; there was so much blood in the way that without Pedro there it was all he could do to sprawl like a drunken jellyfish. The Yeerk could fix that, though. Electrical signals rerouted through a body made of neurons, connecting his brain to his spine. After a few months, they were so in synch that the lag wasn’t even noticeable.

His fine motor control was still a gamble.

**

Before each battle, Tony has to land somewhere discreet, flip his faceplate up, and lie down so that Pedro can slither out and demorph. 

It’s safer than running up against the time limit while something shoots at them, even if he has to be careful not to let his teammates catch on.

**

It was a stupid accident, that’s all. A stupid accident like all the other stupid accidents Tony’s made in his life, that harm other people, even if this is the first time someone else has been screwed over so intimately.

**

Once every two days, Pedro has to stay out of his head for thirty minutes instead of the usual five. Tony built what amounts to a tiny Emergency Room in his basement, where the two of them can lie side by side while automated systems pump liquid nutrition down Pedro’s throat.

Afterward, when Pedro creeps into his ear, he spends a few minutes fussing around, checking the blood vessels that ruptured and spilled barricades of blood down the alleyways of Tony’s synapses, putting gentle pressure on the glands that don’t connect properly any longer, firing up neurons that lie dormant or fire randomly in his absence. He connects pieces of working tissue by routing the signal through himself.

He brings Tony’s mind back online.

**

Tony’s short-term memory was hit badly, and it was one of the problems that couldn’t be solved by laying a living conduit between disparate fragments. His long-term memory was okay, though, not undamaged but mostly intact.

Pedro patched his short-term memory into Tony’s without a word of complaint. 

Possibly he didn’t even notice doing it. He was doing a lot for Tony’s thinking by then.

**

Tony Stark fights as Iron Man, snarks at Fury, spends hours rewriting the Universe in the lab with Bruce Banner.

Tony Stark changes, but the changes are subtle, fragmentary.

Pepper would notice, but Tony avoids Pepper. It’s the one change everyone notices. Rhodey would notice, but the military keeps Rhodey overseas and the Avengers work keeps Tony out of his vicinity.

JARVIS notices, but then, JARVIS already knows.

**

Tony lost some of himself. When they were writing the list, though, he couldn’t say exactly what. Bits of himself that he couldn’t describe, emotional flavours and behavioural tics and the way some of his senses reported data.

He lost things that he never knew he cared about, until they were gone.

**

They enter symbiosis.

**

It was a stupid accident. A stupid accident, after the Tesseract ripped a hole in the night sky and reeled in another universe, and two worlds brushed together. A stupid accident, when the Captain saw crippled children wearing the bodies of animals and burning, and of course they had to help…

**

They try to stay out of trouble, during fights, which Tony takes every opportunity to point out the absurdity of. He doesn’t actually argue, because neither of them wants him to get hit in the head. So it’s repulsor blasts and missiles and landing blows from above, and relying on the armour when they absolutely have to get in close.

He slaps the palms of his hands against the exposed panel in the robot’s armour. One good jolt fries the system, and the giant thing freezes in its tracks, one arm raised high and pulling it slowly off balance.

Tony fires up the repulsors, but it’s already tumbling down.

The ground swats him like a fly.

**

The roof of the cave fell in, and Tony had his helmet off. Stupid, to think it was safe, but that was Tony Stark, he’d always been like that. He had his helmet off, and he took three blows to the head when the collapse sealed them in, and left Tony Stark trapped, unconscious, his brain bleeding, alone with a mute quadriplegic who had spent fourteen years flat on his back in a bed.

**

The impact shakes Tony’s brain inside his skull, and Pedro does what he has done for the last two years of his life: He takes care of it. He damps out the impact to the best of his ability, he searches for damaged blood vessels. Though the blow that knocked Tony unconscious battered his body and left him dazed, he looks for new damage and tries to stop it becoming worse.

Tony’s brain isn’t reporting data.

**

The roof fell in, and Pedro morphed a Yeerk.

**

Tony Stark hasn’t been truly unconscious for a very, very long time. Tony Stark is unconscious now, with no way to hear an alert or to follow the two-hour rhythm.

Pedro can’t follow it either.

**

Thunder rolled above, and Pedro crawled in through Tony Stark’s left ear, a two-inch grey slug whose body was almost entirely made of neurones. His palps contacted the edge of Tony’s brain, and electricity sparked.

**

Pedro can’t tell where they are. He can’t tell if they have been moved. He can’t tell if the suit is still on.

**

The Pool ship fired, the Tesseract roiled. Pedro put pressure on the leaking blood vessels and tamped the jumbled sections of Tony Stark’s brain. He pulled out memories and hypotheses. He found large chunks of the brain still operating, but unable to communicate.

**

He feels vibrations. Someone pulls back an eyelid. Tony Stark’s mind does not react, but Pedro sees it. The helmet is off.

Tony will need him for the rest of his life, not just for the next three days.

Pedro leaves.

**

Tony Stark’s mind was broken apart and gone. Pedro settled himself into the crevices of the damaged brain, and brought him back together.

**

Pedro crawls out, and cannot hear people shouting.

Hands snatch him up, and curl around him, trying to crush his growing, demorphing body. People stare down at him where he lies on the floor, and jab a needle in his arm before he can morph again.

**

The Blade Ship died and the Tesseract began to calm. Pedro focused Tony’s eyes, clumsy in another’s body, and with slow, careful experimentation, he lifted Tony’s body to its feet.

**

He takes the shape of a Cooper’s hawk and calls out in thought-speak, asking them how long he’s been unconscious, asking where Tony is, desperately trying to explain. He tells them, again and again, that they need to put him back.

Nobody listens.

**

They stumbled out of the rubble, Tony Stark’s body lurching like a zombie, leaving rocks streaked with haphazard repulsor scorch marks behind them.

The Tesseract calmed, and two worlds turned away from one another.

**  
Captain America stands on the other side of the glass and demands to know what he’s done to Tony Stark’s brain. His face is furious and betrayed, and Pedro doesn’t know how to get through to him.

In a hospital bed, several floors up, blood vessels weakened two years ago are rupturing.

Tony Stark’s brain begins to shut down.

**

Captain America dragged Tony Stark into the quinjet, and Pedro watched his world seal itself away from him without realising what he was looking at.

**

Four hours after Pedro slithered out of his head, Tony Stark dies.

Pedro has lived his life to a two-hour clock. He knows when the time limit of his morph approaches.

He ignores it.

Six hours and twenty-three minutes after he last morphed Yeerk, Pedro is a Cooper’s hawk in truth.

**

Tony Stark dies two years and eight days after the Tesseract brought two universes together.

It’s rather a relief, to tell the truth.

**Author's Note:**

> Pedro shows up all of once in the Animorphs series, in the same book that introduces the Auxiliaries. He apparently doesn't become an Auxiliary proper, but James insists that Pedro gets at least one good morph as a condition of the disabled kids signing on, so I took that and ran with it.


End file.
